we spent some time with the rivers and the creeks this past week. darla enjoyed throwing things into said bodies of water. it was very nice of mother nature to give us those temperature spikes that allowed for some outdoor exploration. this is pretty fantastic time of year for getting a last little communion with nature.
although, i am hoping for some winter hikes this year :)
i think you all should know that she was trying to teach the ducks to fetch in that second photo. she’s special.
i much prefer a nice stroll in the woods over any other activity with my girl. after a picnic lunch at their pondside wildlife observation deck we took our apples and went for a walk in sodalis nature park.
i love the way her imagination has the freedom to expand when there are few parameters. we walked along the trail, singing various songs, clearing sticks off the trail and using the sticks to build various projects darla dreamed up. i loved watching her excitement as she found red leaves and exclaimed “i found the first leaf of autumn!” or when she found large rocks to climb and jump off.
i’m looking forward to a whole season of these nature walks.
“I” driven learning:
darla chose I for this week. i lucked out again since both st. patrick’s day and the ides of march fell during our time frame. well, the weeks are getting pretty sloppy and i think this might have been 8 days but whatevs.
ice was also a very versatile subject for us. we did our ice cream visit to jeni’s, made ice cubes with food coloring – an idea from jamie – and talked about ice in the arctic as it relates to polar bears. we saw the polar bears at the zoo and scoped them out a bit more in friends’ magazine. darla is pretty distressed by the fact that the polar ice caps are melting and the polar bear population is declining.
mike has been sailing around the south pacific islands so we looked all those up on the globe and then darla drew a picture of her “dream island” which she said didn’t really consist of anything besides pink trees.
for the ides of march i tried to get the kids to say “et tu, brute” to each other all day but do you know what 3 year olds don’t like to speak? Latin.
and of course the st. patrick’s day celebration was lots of fun and useful. we learned about ireland, watched the secret of kells, had irish inspired snacks i.e. irish cheddar – lazy mom – and we made four leaf clovers. i asked her to list four things she felt lucky to have in her life and her list is as follows: lipstick, crayons, glow worms, and her bunny. hmmm. her lipstick is actually chapstick and the bunny, incidentally, is not even hers. i may have to do a more thorough job of teaching her our blessings. for mine i listed family, friends, health and music. she made me write her name out underneath family because she proclaimed she needed her own spot. quite right, but i did point out to her that i didn’t even place above glow worms in her heart. such is the life of a mom.
darla is with her grandparents this weekend so i’m going to take the opportunity to recharge and come back with more dedication to education this upcoming week. we did start on G today – she picked it out but universe helped me with the start of gymnastics today and her visit to grandparents.
today we had little pellets of sleet punctuating our car ride conversations. it’s hard to believe that just days ago it was in the 70s. i’m posting some more of our sunny pics to help me remember.
willow the goat
i’m including this pic again because i love it so much
monkey bars. i know it looks like she’s in distress but she was loving it. trust me.
counting pine cones and if this picture had audio you would hear the nature lecture i was receiving about the pine nuts inside that birds, squirrels and humans really enjoy. love her.
who’s ready to skip march and head straight on to april? anyone?
we learned about T last week and it was pretty easy. i don’t know if you know this but Ts are everywhere. little miss darla had fun pointing them out …
drawing Ts in sand and on sidewalks
we drew pictures of trees
and got her tricycle out for some trick riding
we communed with the trees on our nature hike
and my favorite of the T week activities – darla “planted” a forest at the creek
we searched for totoros in said trees
we of course took our trip to the tuckers’ and did a drawing of papa tom tucker
she drove her new tractor – my dad’s contribution to T week
and spent lots of time just being with papa tom.
for the record i want a goat in every picture i take now. they make them automatically awesome.
we’re still in indiana and hopefully i’ll have something wonderful and insightful to say about what i wear and how i dance to Tennis tonight – since i never really seem to be able to focus on musical merits – but here are some of our out-of-doors doings from the weekend.
visiting nashville, indiana
a girl’s first chai
grandma love
on our way to the old fashioned nut shop. yummy.
we named him fizzgig.
and i took the girl creeking. it makes me sad sometimes that we live in the city and darla doesn’t get to roam the rural areas i did as a wee one. but, thankfully, we have grandma and grandpa’s. every child needs a creek.
we saw lots of animal tracks, darla found interesting rocks, we looked at trees and plants and all sorts of nature things with the highlight of the visit to the wilderness being that we saw a mink. A MINK, i tell you. it’s the only one i’ve ever seen in non-coat form.
anchor hocking in my creek
she took her socks and shoes off for the full effect. i love her.
and here was the big surprise of the weekend: darla’s very own tractor from grandpa. unfortunately, i think she will have her mother’s driving skills.
lastly, darla’s picture of her Grandpa Tom. do you see the resemblance?
i love our retreats here to indiana. looking forward to our visits again in april when i’ll hopefully be supporting another couple’s birth of an aries bambino. i was joking with Sarah, the mother of my first doula experience, that i will just block my schedule off in april every year and advertise doulaship only for Aries babies. being a ram myself, i’m pretty partial.
darla originally picked last week as a T week but i switched it to V because of valentines. ’cause, seriously, V needs all the help it can get. here’s our V learning.
so i leaned on the valentine thing quite hard the first part of the week. i cheated by chalking out weekly library trip as a “visit” but i wanted to include it in here for the sheer chance of bragging that my child now insists we visit the art gallery of the main library every time we go. oooohhh i love the columbus library. lots of other people do, too. guess that’s why it’s number one in the nation.
we did a lot with vegetables. darla helped me with the veggie portion of meals all week. and we drew up her dream garden. well, i drew the veggies and she scribbled some yellow on it and said it was corn but then she set to work on a scarecrow with the black.
we talked about venus, the planet and the roman goddess. i pulled up the birth of venus and the venus de milo and she was very concerned about where venus de milo’s arms were and why the fairies were so big in boticelli’s painting.
and since we were into art that day i broke out van gogh and velazquez because that’s what we had around the house.
it wasn’t a great week for learning because i was feeling uninspired but i think it will suffice.
learning at home about the letter F
funny faces with our friends and fried eggs in toast
Fairies! this has to be my crowning achievement thus far as a parent. that and the fact that darla loves to watch water birth on youtube. we did days and days of fairy learning.
counting them, reading poems and books about them, drawing them, movies about them, dressing like them. we just did a comprehensive fairy lesson. i discovered that robert louis stevenson involved fairies in many of his children’s poems. the elementary school that darla will attend is named after this fantastical man and i have decided that she will enter into the public schooling system under his namesake solely on the fact that he liked to write about fairies. these little beings are no joke to me.
we drew foxes and frogs. movies about each. we read about foxes and frogs. we even found one book that involved foxes, frogs and fairies. how convenient.
i let darla pick out some flowers for the week and we reviewed the different parts of flowers.
we learned a lot about france and i tried to incorporate some french vocabulary into the week
the end result was some highly stereotyped finger art
we went out to a french bistro where darla ate butter straight from the packet like any good french citizen would
we did a lot of other things that i won’t bore you with. but i love sharing what we do so the next time you see my child spinning in circles talking in a made up language i have some proof that i’m making attempts at educating the dear child.
our cosi membership pulled through for us in yet another city. here’s our morning at the indiana state museum last week. i was loving some hoosier history.
1. robert indiana sculpture
2. gazing upon the old L.S. Ayers holiday display
3. feeling how a gargoyle is carved from indiana limestone
4. loved the indiana art gallery
5. daddy daughter cheeseface
6. getting a curiously strong after lunch mint at Yats. seriously some of the best food indy has to offer is at this restaurant. spicy thai peanut etouffe??!! it was good.
7. momma daughter love
well now i can finally share these projects our girl did for the grandparentals. they’ve been gifted and well received.
this was a nice project for darla. i have to admit i got a little micromanage maniac about the letters in the corner so i drained some of the fun out of it with being crazy but she had a good time with the rest of the canvas.
super simple.
put some stick on letters on a canvas. paint over them. pull them off. fun, personalized art. voila! art school here we come.
momjeanz 